


November 1st

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cults, Drunk Sex, Halloween, Horror, House Party, Intoxication, M/M, Psychological Horror, Rituals, Supernatural Elements, Unreliable Narrator, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26831899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: Felix wakes up the night after a Halloween party with the worst hangover he's ever had and a hot, naked stranger in the room next to him. What happens next will shock you.
Relationships: Kim Seungmin/Lee Felix
Comments: 13
Kudos: 88
Collections: Stray Kids SpookFest





	November 1st

**Author's Note:**

> Written for prompt 047 for SKZ SpookFest, which reads as follows:
> 
> "1st November. A wakes up in a room that's not his own. His skeleton costume is covered in dirt and his hands are bloody. B is sleeping naked on the floor. When A goes to the bathroom, he finds a teeth in the sink and a knife in the shower. There's blood everywhere. What happened last night?" 
> 
> Hopefully it's bloody enough for you, dear prompter.

Holy fucking shit. 

His head hurt so goddamn much!

Like somebody was fucking squeezing his skull between a vice. Or bashing it in with a hammer. Or like he had something sharp trying to drill its way into (or out of) his head.

How much did he fucking _drink_ last night? Did he think he was still in his freshman year? Goddamn.

Felix thought he was good with his liquor, especially in comparison to a lightweight like Chan, but it was always that ~one last cup~ that made the difference between shit being fun and shit being awful. And Felix must have drunk enough to make shit awful. Well, at the very least, he’d drunk enough to earn him a migraine the size of the Pacific Ocean the morning after. Oh, and a stomachache that made it feel like his intestines were about to drop straight out of his asshole.

Perhaps he’d pushed things a tad _past_ awful.

Felix had to do this carefully. He had to stitch all the little bits together and _remember_. Step by step. Slowly, slowly. Okay.

Yesterday was Halloween. Good. He still remembered that.

So that made today… what? November 1st? As long as he hadn’t slept away a day. He’d done that once and it was not as fun as it sounded.

God. Even though his room was dead silent, it still felt like he could hear the ear-splitting bass of the electronic music Chan blasted full volume at last night’s party.

No. Wait. That oontz-oontz noise he could hear was his pulse thudding in his ears. His skull clamping tight around his brain.

Felix attempted to open his eyes but even the small crack between the curtain panels let enough midday light into the room to get his eyes stinging, to send his head spinning. Fuck! He squeezed his eyes shut. Sucked in a deep, whistling breath between his teeth and let it out slowly until he no longer felt his pulse throb through his skull.

Shit.

What _happened_ last night?

He knew the basics. Like… He knew he’d gone to Hyunjin’s Halloween party. Of course. There’s no way he’d miss it for the world. He knew he’d enviously watched Minho make out with some girl in a nurse outfit on the couch, desperately wishing he was the girl in the nurse outfit. He knew he’d been one of the first people to hop on a table and dance. He knew Changbin, in his stupid cowboy hat, boots and chaps, had pressed him up against the kitchen stove, sucked a hickey into his neck and groped him through the front of his cheapo Party City costume. And all of that had been before his second shot!

But everything else? Especially after that fifth shot? It was all gaping holes. Nauseating blurs. Radio static.

Though he was pretty sure Hyunjin had been dressed as Darth Vader, of all fucking things. Felix didn’t understand how the image of Hyunjin taking off that ugly ass helmet and letting his red lightsaber cast harsh shadows across his face was an image seared so lucidly in his memories when the rest of the night was a shapeless blob of glow in the dark color and bought-in-bulk party appetizers.

Shit. Why couldn’t he remember much else?

Okay. Wait. He had something. 

Faint and insignificant. But it was _something_.

He’d gotten a call from his mom. He’d barely been able to hear her with all the music blasting in the house but she’d asked him if he’d gotten that bank account deposit she’d sent over and then casually mentioned that she was considering divorcing his father, like that was just something you casually brought up after asking about the weather, before promptly disconnecting the call.

Damn.

Wasn’t there something else? Something better and kinder that he could remember?

Felix still had too much sleep in his brain to really focus, but he’d been hungover enough times to know that it was always easiest to remember shit immediately afterward - when the headache was still bad and the queasiness was still fresh - rather than later in the day when he’d sobered up and let all those passing hours smear the edges of his recollection. “No more getting black out drunk for a month,” he told himself. “No. _Two_ months.” He was out of practice. His liver needed rest. He told himself, “No more Hyunjin parties. You got that?” Because Hyunjin still partied like he wasn’t old enough to buy his own alcohol. “Oh my God. What _happened_ last night?” His voice was scratchy and hoarse. All gravel. It didn’t sound familiar to his own ears. Felix cleared his throat but it hardly helped. He was horrendously thirsty. Like he hadn’t swallowed water in a week.

He needed to get to the kitchen and pour himself a glass. Or two. Or three.

It was risky business but he braced himself and opened his eyes a second time.

Knowing it was coming made it easier to deal with. The brightness of the sunlight shining from between the curtain panels. The sting it put in his eyes and in his head. He slapped a palm to his temple because that lessened the headache by a large enough fraction to make it bearable. To make him unclench his teeth.

The next step would be sitting up.

He did that slowly. Leaning to one side and hoisting himself upright. Whenever his headache went crazy, he paused until the dizziness passed. 

But that wasn’t the only thing slowing him up.

Why was he so fucking sore? 

His arms. His legs. His chest. His waist. His back. He ached all over as if he’d spent the previous evening digging graves. Or like he'd tried to go toe to toe with Chan in the gym. Like he’d gotten into a fight with someone twice his size and got his fucking ass beat.

Ugh. Shit. There. Now he was sitting up.

Felix could practically feel his blood seep down from his head, through his veins and to his limbs. Everything tingled. Everything felt icy.

He looked around. He was hungover enough to still be a little confused but he was alert enough to know that this was not his bedroom. He probably should have figured that shit out earlier. He didn’t own any fucking curtains! He didn’t have a goddamn headboard!

“Shit,” he hissed, squinting into the four corners of the room. It was cozily decorated. But in the kitschy, cluttered, tacky way a grandmother would set everything up. “Where am I?” This didn’t look like Chan’s spiffy ‘I just make music on the side’ downtown loft. It didn’t even look like Changbin’s shabby only-one-step-above-student-housing studio apartment. (The bedroom had a door after all.) Hell, this wasn’t Hyunjin’s parents’ modern house near the edge of town either. Where the flying fuck was he? “Did I go home with somebody?” Did he have a one night stand? Fuck. He really thought he was still in his freshman year.

God. The sex must have been good as hell if he was this worn out even after a night of sleep. If he was _this_ fucking sore.

A little bit more of last night trickled into his head. Tiny fragments. Itty slivers.

Some girl had dropped a full bottle of watermelon vodka and it had taken four people to sweep up all of the glass and two more people on top of that to convince three _other_ people not to suck the spilled alcohol up off of the tile floor through straws.

That had been early in the night. Right at the start. Just after Felix had arrived.

What else? What else?

Some weirdos came into the house. All of them wearing black robes with the hoods pulled low over their faces, the sleeves drawn up over their wrists. All of them held lit candles in their hands. All of them did this weird, freaky, scary chanting shit that made everybody's shadows do this weird, flickering thing. God. Had they been party crashers or some shit? But it was Halloween and them standing in a circle in the den chanting had actually set the mood in a way? And Chan had turned the music down a bit and said into the mic, "the preparations are complete." 

What else?

Jisung and Jeongin had broken up a month ago but Jisung had gotten drunk enough to regret it. He had thrown a bit of a tantrum, had gotten kind of screechy and manic, and fell over onto the floor and wouldn’t let go of Jeongin’s ankles as he ugly sobbed and begged for forgiveness in front of a circle of curious onlookers. Felix had recorded the majority of the mess and put it on his Insta story. It had kind of been hilarious.

What else?

Gosh. It was like going fishing in a fog, not knowing what he was about to reel in. Everything was just murky shadows just beneath the surface.

Another memory sparked in his brain.

Felix had spotted some mysterious hottie in the living room. Tall. Dark hair in an almost-mullet with a streak of pink dye across his bangs like he was ten years late to the MySpace party. Pretty lips. Gauged ears. Smudged eyeliner. The kind of scene kid Felix went crazy for as a teen but nowadays he was more into musclehead himbos like Changbin and Chan. Still, the scene kid had some kind of allure. Felix couldn't help but watch him. Approach him. He had on such a frighteningly realistic costume but Felix can’t remember exactly what he was supposed to be. Van Helsing? One of the officers from Resident Evil? Some anime character? Eh. Did it matter? Felix had been more interested in getting drunk but the two of them had run into each other more than once over the course of the night. As if the guy was seeking him out. Trying to get his attention. Felix vaguely recalled putting his hand on the hot guy’s shoulder and being a bit repulsed by how damp and sticky his shirt had been. The guy had clearly poured too much fake blood over his clothes.

Hell, Felix might not have gotten laid last night at all. Now that his head was a bit more clear, he looked down at himself and noticed that he was still buttoned up to the neck in his horrendous Party City skeleton costume that wasn’t all too much more than a onesie. Talk about dirt cheap. 

Wait. It was literally covered in dirt now! What the fuck? Dried mud was caked up around the cuffs and halfway up his calves and elbows like he’d gone traipsing through the woods or something crazy.

That was… a possibility. 

Hyunjin’s parents’ house was near the woods. And it _had_ been Halloween night. Perhaps Felix had gone out there with a few other peeps for a real Halloween thrill. It was no spooky hayride or corn maze but it could have been something.

He _did_ remember running through the woods last night.

But he couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that he had been chasing someone as opposed to being the one getting chased.

Felix tried to follow the blurry thought, he tried to see the memory through to the end, see who it was that managed to keep just out of sight on the other side of the trees, but like any dream, the details darkened the more he tried to shine a light on them.

Well, at least he knew where the mud came from.

Felix sort of halfway wiggled to the edge of the bed, swung one leg over the side and stopped short with a gasp.

Sprawled out on the hardwood floor next to the bed, almost directly beneath his feet, was some dude. Arm swung over his face. Sleeping on his side. Definitely completely naked. Yup. His bare ass was half-raised into the air like he was awaiting a good spanking.

He looked… familiar. Though if you asked, Felix couldn’t fucking tell you his name.

With a socked foot, Felix nudged him gently, near the armpit, in an attempt to wake him. The man on the floor let out the quietest grunt and then rolled over onto his back with a choppy-sounding snore.

Felix didn’t mean to stare. Well, he did. Out of shock and surprise, at first. Because… hello? But then he found himself staring out of an entirely different emotion altogether. His eyes traveled up and down the length of the sleeping man’s body. He took in the shape of his wiry muscles, the mild tan across his shoulders, the wickedly complex tattoos that stretched the width of his chest and halfway down both arms. He was all gangly torso, long and skinny legs, narrow little waist, soft pink-tipped cock curled up across his pubic hair--

Felix forced himself to look away. 

Was that his hookup from last night? He definitely wasn’t Felix’s usual type but stranger things had happened in the past. It was how he met Changbin. 

Had they slept together? There was no easy way to tell. No button he could press. No front desk to call down to.

He attempted to reason things out. Come up with alternatives. They may have just been cuddling and the guy could have rolled off the bed in his sleep. Or perhaps when they'd stumbled into the room, he’d given Felix the bed and taken the floor. But would he just sleep naked directly on the hardwood? No pillow or blanket? Well, it was his house, Felix figured. But… no. Had they really fucked while Felix was in this shitty little onesie with skeleton bones screen-printed onto the front? Fuck. How unsexy. Even if he could just wriggle his cock free between two of the buttons, it still couldn't have been too hot. Shit. He really should have gone for that devil costume. It had been way more expensive and so much harder to take off but he would have at least looked like he tried.

Well, whether he had hooked up with this guy or not, he didn’t really plan on being around when he woke up.

Felix lowered his hand from his temple and wiped at the dried clods of dirt that stuck to his torso and legs. He didn’t care that he was shaking the grime loose and depositing it all on the poor sap’s clean but wrinkled bed comforter. Washing machines existed. 

But… Huh? What was that all over his hand? 

All over… both of his hands? 

Hell. How come he hadn't noticed earlier?

Felix stared down at the backs of his hands and then turned them over to stare at his palms. It wasn’t just dirt caked under his nails or between his fingers. There was-- He sniffed his palms. The smell. Oh fuck, the _smell_. Yup. That was real blood, alright. He'd busted his nose enough times in the gym to know. Ugh. His hands were completely red with the shit. Like he’d smeared his palms in a pool of it as if it was paint. Like a dumbass, he sniffed his hands again. Stuck out his tongue and licked a stripe up his palm.

The metallic, coppery taste overwhelmed him. Instantly triggered his gag reflex. It was so much thicker, so much more syrupy, than he fucking expected it to be.

“Holy shit,” he choked out. “Holy shit. Holy shit.” He felt nauseous. His stomach churned. 

He had to get to a fucking bathroom. He was going to fucking hurl!

Felix sprang up from off of the bed, hopped over the sleeping man’s sprawled body. He would have ran but he skidded to a halt. There was dirt and mud across the room’s light-colored hardwood flooring. Footprints. Smears. Entire clods of soil and clumped roots of plants. Leaves. Snapped twigs. It was a dark brown path from the door to the edge of the bed like a trail of breadcrumbs. 

Had that sleeping guy dragged him in here? And tossed him on the bed to rest?

Or had he dragged that guy in here? Dropped him to the floor like a sack of luggage?

What the _hell_ happened last night?

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried and tried and tried to remember anything else but all he could distinctly recall was Chan giving him a pat on the cheek and telling him that everything would be fine.

_What_ would be fine?

Okay. He really had to stop drinking. He said to himself, “No. More. Parties.” Not just Hyunjin parties. All parties. He would not attend another!

His stomach did a barrel roll.

Bathroom. Bathroom! Bathroom!!!!

Felix rushed towards the bedroom door. He turned the knob. The wooden door opened without a single creak of the hinges. “Hello,” he called out into the hallway. 

There was no response.

“Hello!” He raised his voice. Heard it echo. “Hyunjin? Chan?” Hell. “Jeongin?”

No answer.

No passed out partygoers on the floor. No random dog sniffing at his ankles. He wasn’t used to his morning-after routine being this quiet. Whether it was after a party or after a hookup. If he crashed on someone’s floor or couch after being put through the ringer, there was always someone up super early making breakfast, brewing coffee. Sweeping up the mess. Tossing out the trash. Trying to get everyone up and out. Making things normal again.

There was none of that here.

Just silence.

Just framed photographs of a five-member family he didn’t recognize hanging on the wall. Just suspiciously red handprints slapped across the wallpaper and more dirt and mud leading down the hall and out of sight around the corner. 

He had to remind himself that this wasn't Hyunjin's house. That he'd taken his Halloween celebrations elsewhere so of course no one would be here. Shit. He didn't even know where _here_ was. Was he five minutes from home or fifty?

Felix pressed his hands to his pockets, searching for his phone. Or, rather, he pressed his hands to the place where his goddamn pockets _would_ be if this shit ass costume had pockets!!

Fuck!!!!!!!

That meant Chan still had his phone. Wherever the hell Chan was.

Felix would have to figure out where he was and how he would get back to his house later. First, he needed to make sure he wasn’t about to vomit all over someone’s floor.

At least the bathroom was just down the hall. The next door on the right.

Jesus Christ. He had barely even stepped inside but he could already tell someone hadn’t flushed.

He tried one of the switches on the wall by the door. Got the fan. Tried the other. Got the light.

The bathroom was wide. Spacious. You could always gauge how nice a house was by how richly furnished the bathrooms were. A dark, sopping wet lump of clothes was wedged into the corner behind the door. Felix decided the dirty, smelly things belonged to the naked dude across the hall.

He caught another whiff of that wicked smell. His insides got all twisted up. Like someone was legit twisting his organs in a tightly balled-up fist. Fuuuuck. He wasn't about to stand there and say his shit didn't stink but it didn't stink _like this_.

What the hell did they eat, yo? God. They could have at least flushed! He raised a hand to his nose to pinch his nostrils shut but caught too deep a whiff of his blood-soaked fingers.

His guts did a somersault. Fumbled the landing.

Felix felt his throat tighten and _sting_ as bile rose. He sucked in a breath through his mouth and swallowed. That bought him like five seconds. He needed to move.

Carefully, like something might jump out of the pipes and bite at his ankles, he used his foot to lift the toilet lid and then risked glancing inside.

Clean. Practically sparkling.

He heaved a sigh of relief only to halfway gag.

If there wasn’t shit sitting in the toilet, then where was that smell coming from? 

Fuck. "Don't tell me someone dropped a deuce in the tub?"

He got queasy all over again at just the thought. His face heated up. His throat constricted. Felix dropped to his knees, hoisted up the toilet seat and held his head above the bowl. He sucked in a deep breath, let it out, sucked down another, let it out. He waited and waited to see if all that alcohol would come rushing back up his throat. 

Nothing.

His stomach churned. Just once. Like someone stirring a boiling pot on the stove. He tensed up, ready to spew, but… 

But… 

Nothing. Nothing at all.

He knew not to trust his body just yet. He'd had mornings like this before. As soon as he stood up and turned away, everything could come right back up so he better keep his mouth aimed somewhere safe. Felix squeezed his eyes shut. He breathed in and out, in and out. 

His throat felt warm and scratchy. His chest felt tight. His stomach bubbled. Gurgled. So loud it was like a roar.

Fuck. He was going to die.

He opened his mouth wide, felt his throat open up.

And then… And then...

He burped.

A deep, loud, long one that felt like it shook his whole rib cage.

“Fuck,” he whispered and waved a hand in front of his face to dispel the wretched smell. Like he'd swallowed something dead and rotting.

The fluttering in his stomach eased, at least.

Crisis averted. For now.

His nausea dissipated but hunger settled in. Ravaging. Constant.

His stomach growled again but at least this time it was demanding to be filled instead of threatening to empty itself all over this tile floor.

“Shit,” Felix wheezed. He stood up straight. He needed to eat something. Preferably something hot and filling to settle his stomach. He also _needed_ to brush his teeth. Go to town with the mouthwash. Pop a mint. Or two.

He needed to get home.

But he should probably wash all of this blood off of his hands first before he tried to go outside. It couldn’t be real blood, could it? There was so much. _Too_ much. If he pulled on his sleeves, the blood stained his skin halfway up to his elbows. It couldn’t be real. Right? Because if all that blood belonged to somebody else… No. No. He wasn’t going to think about it! He wasn’t going to let his imagination get the better of him. Felix stepped over to the sink and was just about to twist on the faucet when he realized there was something already at the bottom of the stopped-up basin.

Were those--

“Jesus Christ!”

\--teeth?

Not just one or two like they'd been knocked out in a damn fist fight but enough teeth to fill a mouth!! Two mouths. .........many mouths. They were kind of hideous, all piled up at the bottom of the sink like that. Yellowish things. Some of them were spotted with brown. A few had whole pits. Cavities. Felix wasn't sure he'd ever seen entire teeth like this. Bloody and gunky. The roots like tiny little fingers. Bright red like they had been plucked from swollen, bloody gums. The molars were squared off like dice. A few of the incisors were chipped, capped in gold, cracked… but most of them were whole. Tartar clung to a few like a light layer of fur. Before he could think better of it, before he stopped to remind himself how fucking gross this was, he reached out and scooped up a handful. They were moist on his hand. Larger than they looked. Heavy. Sticky with blood. A few of them were pointed and narrow and sharp like they belonged to animals. Felix tilted his palm so they’d all go clinking back into the bottom of the sink.

The noise they made was horrendous. Oddly soft little clicks like a pile of coins.

It sent a shiver up his spine. Grated on his nerves.

Where the hell did they all come from? 

Why were there so fucking _many?_

Felix felt dizzy. His vision swam like he was ~this close~ to passing the fuck out.

He should… He should-- He should wash his hands in the tub. 

Yeah. He should go do that. God. Maybe he should just take a shower. Yeah. He'd feel better after that.

Surely, that guy across the hall would understand, right? They’d brought him to their home, it seemed. Laid him out on their guest bed. The guy wouldn’t get pissed about him using the shower. 

Felix crossed the bathroom, passed the toilet, approached the shower curtain.

The bath mat was mysteriously wet beneath his socks.

Felix grabbed the corner of the curtain. Yanked it aside.

“Shit!”

He jumped backwards. Landed wrong. Slipped on the wet tile floor and fell so hard he couldn't even scream because he had no air left in his lungs. 

The tub was stained just as thoroughly as his hands. 

The blood was thick. Everywhere. So dark a red it was nearly black. The viscous liquid spilled across the side of the tub, splattered halfway up the tiled backsplash. 

Why was there so much blood?

Strangely solid, meaty chunks sat lumpy and wet at the bottom of the tub. Chopped-up sections of something that used to be whole. There was a crimson-stained knife, one of those long, serrated numbers, laying near the clogged-up drain. 

The smell hit him. 

Rot and blood and death,

Felix clamped his hands across his face to block the stench only to realize that the blood was there too. And that he’d just smeared some of the shit over his face. He gagged. Felix dropped his hands to his side. Tried to scream. Only a wheeze of air came out.

There was no denying it now. Someone had been fucking stabbed. No. Getting stabbed implied some kind precision was used. Some kind of skill. Whatever--whoever--was in that tub had been eviscerated. _Clawed apart_. The body had been torn to fucking ribbons with peeled-off skin, shredded muscles, broken bones and lumpy, oozing organs sitting in a soupy mess underneath it all. And Felix had a strong, sinking feeling that he was the one who did it.

He pushed himself to his feet and was shocked his legs could still hold him upright. He made a grab for the shower curtain. Missed. 

Fuck it. FUCK IT! No need to hide this shit. He was going to run. He wasn’t going to get involved! 

Oh God, oh God. His stomach was about to fucking pole vault out of his mouth.

He turned away from the tub. Rushed up to the sink, ready to hurl. His bloody hands clutched the edge of the sink, staining the white porcelain with the red of his prints. His knees threatened to give beneath him and that was almost a relief!

Memories of last night threatened to open up and show him the truth about the last twelve hours. He let them in a little bit. Let himself remember Chan pushing him towards the weirdos in the hooded robes. The ones who were still doing all that fucked-up chanting at Hyunjin's party. Felix remembered ashen, bony hands clamping tight around his wrists and dragging him to the floor. Pinning him down. He remembered watching one of the figures pour salt in a circle around him as if to cage him in. He vaguely, distantly remembered the hooded figures dripping hot wax onto the floor around him, onto his skin. God. That hurt. That had hurt. And he had called out. He had screamed. But most of the people at the party must have thought it was just an act. They walked right by. They pulled out their phones. They pointed and laughed and kept drinking.

He wanted to remember what the fuck else had happened that night.

He wanted to remember what else those creepy hooded guys had done to him but now he could only remember useless, meaningless things. Jeongin pouring him another shot. Changbin spinning around, showing off his costume, smacking his butt and swearing he shoulda went with the assless chaps. Hyunjin breathing out, "Luke, I am your father."

Felix wanted to remember anything else. 

But...

But--

But then Felix caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror above the sink and his mind fucking blanked.

Holy shit.

His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment. The blood went ice-cold in his veins.

What he saw in the glass was the kind of true, deep terror summoned forth by whispering a cursed name in the dark.

This time, when he opened his mouth to scream, he did it right. And did it loud. 

Not so much a scream as it was a bellow.

A noise so low and so _bestial_ that it stung his own ears. That it actually sent a damn crack across the glass and halfway splintered his view.

He stumbled backwards. Fast. His back slammed against the open door behind him.

The being in the mirror was… something else. _Someone_ else. It didn’t look like Felix at all. It merely wore his body. It dragged it around like a marionette on strings. Holy fuck. The skin on his face was just... gone! Completely gone. Torn away. The muscles, the hair, the cartilage… It was like it had all sloughed off in the middle of the night. Like everything had been scraped off of his skull. His head was nothing but fucking smooth bone. Bleached white. Hollow. Almost recognizable but twisted around into some unfamiliar, inhuman shape. Like that of a deer. Like that of an insect. A large white shape. Featureless like a mask.

Tall, curved horns ripped out of the top of Felix’s skull. His mouth was a wicked circle lined with two rows of triangular teeth. His eyes--six diagonal slits across the bone--emitted alien little tendrils of raven-black shadow that slithered over the white of his skull and reached into the air like numerous grasping, reaching hands.

Felix reached up a hand. Poked and prodded. Prayed it was some remnant of the alcohol. That it was some hungover nightmare that he’d snap out of. But his fingernails made high-pitched screeching noises when he dragged them up the side of his white head and up towards his horns.

It was real. Everything he saw... It was all fucking real. He could _feel_ it. Each nail left a sharp, digging ache across the bone. Across his... face!

And his cheap-ass skeleton costume… Now that he looked at it, now that he was paying attention, now that he stood still enough to notice the movement, he saw that the fuzzy material gently bulged and wiggled up and down his torso like he was holding something small and living beneath it. And Felix got the sense that if he unbuttoned the goddamn thing, he would see something otherworldly beneath the dyed cotton. 

Something he wouldn’t want to see.

A body he didn’t want to be in.

Catching just a glimpse of it would break his mind. Would twist him insane.

Felix let out another scream.

Louder. Lower.

The walls shook. The toothbrush holder tumbled over the side of the counter and hit the tile floor with a _bang_. The teeth in the sink vibrated and rattled together and made a sound terribly close to a chorus of soprano voices.

At long last, Felix ran out of breath.

The howling noise faded.

But the imagery in the glass remained the same. His reflection still showed that of a bone-faced demon, a faint white glow emanating from the hellish depths of its six eyes.

He had transformed somehow. Morphed into some kind of freakish, hellish monster!

What the fuck!

His stomach twisted into a hard, tight knot. He straightened up his spine. Waited. This wasn’t fear. Fear felt like helicopter blades whirling at the base of his neck. Fear felt like electricity buzz-buzz-buzzing up and down his spine. Fear felt like being yanked about on puppet strings. This was _hunger_. He was… He was still hungry. Hungrier than ever. Deeper than anything he had ever known. Wilder and fiercer than anything he could ever hope to understand. His stomach rumbled. Not just a light little growl that would be sated with a hastily-made PB&J. No sir. His entire being ached like it was incomplete. From his head to his hands. From his legs to his groin. He ached. Like he hadn’t eaten in days. Like there was a swirling void in his belly that could not be filled.

He was hungry. Starving. 

He should… He should find the kitchen. 

Yeah. He should pour some cereal. Or maybe he’d be lucky and find sausages to heat up in the microwave. Even toast would be good.

But…

Felix looked down into the sink.

Why should he do all of that work when he had food _right here_? Perfectly laid out for him like an offering on an altar.

Felix reached out, scooped up a handful of the teeth in the sink and raised them to his wretched, gaping, black hole mouth.

He watched in the mirror as some long, whip-like tongue snaked out of the pit of his throat.

He watched as the wet, dripping, blue-green thing wrapped around most of the teeth and easily scooped them up. They made soft clicking noises as they scraped over each other. He could taste the blood on them. He could still taste the bits of food that clung to the inner grooves. Felix watched in the mirror as that long tongue retracted and pulled those bloody teeth into his mouth. 

_This is disgusting_ , was his first thought, but then… 

He chewed them.

His needle teeth made easy work of the goddamn things. Grinding. Breaking. Crunching. He only had to apply the mildest pressure to split the teeth. To drill into them and taste the bloody, squishy, delicious pulp at the center. It was a delicacy. Salty and metallic. Warm, somehow. The crunch of teeth against teeth rattled his whole goddamn head yet the chewing was easy. Like he was made to rip even larger things asunder. Like he was made to eat things far larger than this.

One particularly pesky tooth finally cracked open. Hard candy with a chewy, gummy center.

Against his better fucking judgment, he moaned at the sweet taste. 

He ground his teeth into them harder. Felt the human-sized molars crumble. Then he slurped the broken, crunchy mess down his throat in one slurry and sighed as the hunger temporarily abated.

Fuck. Fuck!

Common sense drilled its way into his head.

He’d just eaten a handful of people’s teeth. 

And he’d enjoyed it.

Shit!!!

He wanted to be disgusted with himself. He wanted to bend his head over the toilet and vomit up this shit. But instead, he ran his tongue over the blade-like points of his fangs and longed for more.

No. No no no.

Felix shook his head. He had to hold on to at least some tiny little smidgen of humanity.

Felix charged out of the bathroom, ready to find the nearest exit, ready to sprint all the way home if he fucking needed to, when he turned the corner and ran square into a bare, solid chest.

He stepped back. More out of some sort of misplaced politeness than actual fright. "I have to get out of here," he announced.

“Do you not like the food I’ve found for you,” the person he ran into asked, his words still raspy with sleep.

“Food,” Felix repeated. “What food?”

The man the voice belonged to was thrown into silhouette by the sunlight pouring through the windows in the hall behind them. Yet Felix still watched him smile. He still watched him point to Felix’s outstretched hand.

Felix stared down at his hand. There were a few teeth remaining on his palm. 

“Look. I got them fresh. For you,” the man said, smiling wide enough to show off his own teeth.

And before Felix knew it, his long tongue flew out. He sort of directed it. Kinda. Sort of suggested the general direction it should go. It obeyed. His tongue lapped sloppily at his fingers and bloody palm until he got the hang of the new muscles. Then he managed to loop it around the last few teeth on his hand. When Felix sucked his tongue back into his mouth, he now knew what to expect from the texture and hardness. He worked his own fangs back and forth, back and forth, like a saw, and when the teeth snapped apart inside his mouth, he swallowed it all. 

Gulping. 

Gasping. 

Ahhhhhhhh. Satiated.

The man next to him in the hall ran a hand along Felix’s face. 

Well, along the hardened, disfigured, white bone that now made up his head. The man ran his hand up towards Felix’s horns and Felix shivered in mild delight at the gentle touch. It was like being praised. Like being rewarded for a job well done.

He wanted to snuggle into this man’s body heat. He wanted to do this man’s bidding.

“There, there,” the man hummed. He took a step back. When he pulled away, Felix resisted the urge to follow the heat of his hand. “The hunger will take some getting used to. But I’ll help you direct it.”

With the sensation of starving no longer hot and churning in his stomach, Felix could focus on what was in front of him. _Who_ was in front of him.

It was like he was looking through all six of his eyes now. 

The world snapped into sudden clarity, and though he did not take a step, it still felt like he could twist and alter his viewpoint. Like he could move down the hall and peer around the corner without shifting from where he stood.

It was that guy, he realized. Standing in front of him now. He's the naked one who had been sprawled out on the floor beside the bed! There was no mistaking his tattoos or his piercings or his awful-but-kinda-cute hair. And now that Felix got a better look at him, he could tell that this was the same guy he’d ran into so many times at last night’s party. The same one who kept calling out to him like they knew each other. The same scene kid who had too much fake blood on his costume. The same guy who had pressed Felix up against a wall, shoved his tongue into Felix’s mouth and kissed him and bit him until his lips got swollen and bled. 

“That blood on your costume wasn’t fake at all, was it,” Felix questioned.

“Costume,” the guy repeated. He tilted his head to the side. "What costume?"

Felix decided not to pursue that line of questioning any further. He would only be told things that he was already starting to figure out. That this was the guy who flattened Felix against the living room wall, bit at the crook of Felix’s neck and hissed at him to “free yourself.” Over and over again. Free yourself. Free yourself. Until Felix came hard in the front of his ugly costume as he rolled his hips against the other guy’s leg. Right there in front of anyone watching. 

But even that hadn’t been enough. That hadn’t been what the guy wanted out of him. 

“Free yourself,” the guy had commanded. “Free yourself.” He had said it like he wasn’t talking to Felix. More like he was talking to someone hiding down Felix’s throat, further away than his tongue could reach. 

_Free yourself_.

And then all Felix could remember after that was something inside him stirring to life.

The man’s name leapt to the tip of his tongue. “Seungmin?”

Seungmin blinked. He seemed openly surprised that Felix remembered him. Then he took one step back, knelt to the floor and bowed. “I live to serve you.”

Those words did something funny to Felix. They kind of royally fucked him up. Rocked his world. Shook something loose. 

At first, Felix only got another memory out of it.

Hyunjin again. Taking off that stupid as fuck Darth Vader helmet. Waving around that goddamn lightsaber. His face in the red light looked angry. It was the same thing Felix had seen already but then the memory continued. Just a stretch farther. “Stay back,” Hyunjin had screamed in Felix’s face, genuine terror in his eyes. “Stay away from me!” And then he’d smashed that lightsaber over Felix’s head as if such a meager little noise-making toy would stop him. _Could_ stop him.

Distant screams echoed through Felix’s head. The noise came from all directions.

He _had_ chased them out into the woods. And he was positive that he ate whoever he caught and that Seungmin helped him bury what couldn't fit down his throat.

Then Seungmin’s words, Seungmin’s devotion, _I live to serve you_ , triggered something else in Felix. Way way way down. Not just in his gut but deeper. Down to something primal. Something beautiful. A part of him woke up. And quite possibly for the first time. He _liked_ the idea of being worshipped. It… pleased him. It made this twisted, fucked-up situation feel correct. Less nightmare. More dream. Something deep down in him--way down where the shadows in him were the thickest and darkest--told him that it hadn’t been the first time he’d been bowed to but it _had_ been a long time since it had last occurred.

There had been… other bodies before this one.

He had brought other calamities before this one. Floods. Fires. Disease.

This wasn’t the first world he’d terrorized.

“What am I,” Felix asked. It sounded like he had two voices. One low and creeping. The other even lower. Ticks and clicks and whines like an ancient, bleating animal.

Seungmin looked up at him. His smudged makeup and over-long bangs covered up so much of his face but neither really hid his handsomeness. “A vessel,” Seungmin told him. “Well… You _used_ to be a vessel. Infested when you were young. Given time to incubate. But now you’ve been awakened. It’s been prophesied. We've been waiting for this night.”

That didn’t answer Felix’s question.

In fact, it only gave him more questions.

Vessel? Incubate? Infest? Prophecy?

He had just wanted to know what the hell happened last night. He wanted to know how much he drank and how stupid he'd acted. But Seungmin's weird words strung together like that just made it sound like he’d been carrying around some parasite fungus in the puffy corners of his lungs. Like he was pregnant and bloated with a clutch of alien eggs. Like he’d gone his whole life just casually carrying around some wacky cosmic horror beast.

Edgar Allen Poe? Eat your heart out.

“Why am I here,” Felix asked.

Although the words had come out of his own mouth and used some broken, echoing fragments of his own voice, he knew that he hadn’t asked such a thing.

The question had come from the shadowy monster that was now awake inside of his body.

“To bring about the end of the world,” Seungmin answered. He stood up. And he looked spectacular in the light. His lean, nude body. His unblemished skin. He had such pretty toes. Somehow. Such darling knees. Somehow.

He was a treasure worth cherishing. He wanted Seungmin with him forever. Always.

God. Just _look_ at him! He was out of Felix’s league!

Wait. Wait. Hold up. Just a second.

Felix tilted his head.

The tattoos across Seungmin’s chest and arms _meant_ something to Felix. They were just lines and circles and shit but he could read the symbols. He could decipher the patterns. He could see the story told through the geometric shapes. He understood the strange, runic language inked onto Seungmin’s skin.

He figured out what it was.

A list.

A set of instructions, step by step, on how to consume the world. 

Step one, become unbound.

Felix raised a hand to the top button of his skeleton onesie. He came mighty close to popping the button loose but then Seungmin’s slender little fingers clamped tight over his hand. 

“Not until you’re outside,” Seungmin chided. He was smiling quite cheerily to be chastising an eldritch god.

Yet such playfulness didn’t anger the thing Felix shared a consciousness with. In fact, he felt nothing but _amusement_ ring up from the depths of his soul.

Perhaps this fondness of Seungmin was something Felix and The Beast shared.

Perhaps that would be enough to bring Seungmin to the end of the world along with them.

Felix would make sure to save him. A priceless little treasure to hold in the palm of his hand as he spilled fear across the world.

And perhaps The Beast was in agreement with him if he was reading these full-body tingles right.

Felix couldn’t help the laugh that leapt out of him. “How much longer must I wait?”

“Wait just a few more fucking moments,” said Seungmin with a pleased chuckle, “and then you can shed the last of your human skin.”

_Free yourself._

“This way.” Seungmin grabbed him by the hand and led him down the hallway.

Felix expected the sunlight to burn him. To fucking incinerate him like the unholy beast he was.

The light only warmed him. 

He sighed in contentment and eagerly followed Seungmin, lured by the way the sunlight created shadows down his spine and over his ass.

There were tattoos along his back as well, Felix noticed. Designs and runes penned into the flat musculature of his back. Stories and warnings and instructions. This cult had worshipped The Beast for generations, Felix somehow understood. Blind, burning devotion that lit them up from their very souls. And there was one family at the center of it all. A family that carried something magical--something primordial--in their blood. And Felix could feel the call of such ancestry ring out through Seungmin’s veins. An all too different hunger twisted up in his gut. Felix’s eyes followed the groove of Seungmin’s muscles around his narrow waist, to his half-hard cock as it bounced from one thigh to the other as he walked.

The sight of it made an unconscious string of drool leak from between two of Felix’s razorblade teeth. 

Almost too late to matter, more memories from last night sprang up in Felix’s mind.

Someone had tripped, knocked over a vase crammed with artificial flowers and then proceeded to bawl their eyes out about it even though the vase hadn't even cracked.

Felix had gone to the bathroom, came across a passed-out Jisung laying face first in a pool of his own chunky, yellowy-orange vomit. Felix had stepped over him to get to the toilet and then had stepped over him again to leave.

Something else came to him. For the first time ever, Chan had kissed him on the mouth. They had been doing this will-they-won't-they shit for months and it had always been Chan who shied away whenever it really fucking mattered but, last night, he had initiated. His eyes were a little watery when he pulled away. He’d mumbled the word “goodbye” even though Felix had no intention of leaving the party yet. Twelve hours ago, that word had confused Felix. But now, with his new knowledge, with this blood on his hands and those teeth digesting in his innards, he wondered if Chan knew what was going to happen. If he had some hand in it. If what was happening to him now was Chan's fault.

Goodbye.

God-fucking-dammit. Now he remembered someone handing Chan a hooded robe. He had been pinned to the floor, struggling, as he watched Chan draw the hood down over his face.

Felix shook away the haunting memory. Back in the present moment, Seungmin was leading him down the stairs. He tried to cry out. He tried to drag his feet and physically stop him and Seungmin from leaving the house, but he was losing control over this shared body of his. He found himself being able to use less and less of it. Thoughts and emotions still raced through his head but more of him was being stashed away in some cage, in some box deep down. 

Only slaughter awaited them in the living room. 

That cute, five-member family Felix had seen photos of in the hallway?

They were fucking dead.

The mother was across the couch, her neck split open with four sharp lines that mysteriously matched the spacing of Felix’s clawed hands. The father was dumped across the floor, flat on his back, a weapon uselessly clutched in his hairy hand. A golf club. One of the teenagers was slumped against a far wall, the wallpaper behind her head red from her blood. The other teenager was halfway to the kitchen. They laid on their stomach, blood pooled around them, one of their legs severed and trailing behind them as if they'd crawled the last little bit without it. The child knelt by the front door, their hand still clutched the doorknob. Their eyes had been carved out. Blood dripped from their open mouth. An interrupted escape attempt.

That meant the one upstairs in the tub had come from somewhere else.

Felix thought he had done all of this, but--

“I wanted to feed you fresh teeth,” Seungmin told him. “So I gathered some for you. Wait. Do you hear that? Coming from the other side of the room? I think they have an animal.” He peeled his fingers free of Felix’s hand and wandered over to the couch.

Seungmin dropped down to his knees, and then bent all the way forward to get his shoulder onto the floor so he could peer into the shadows beneath the couch.

Felix couldn’t help but stare. At the bruises pinched into Seungmin's calves. At the red, irritated scratches hatched across the back of his thighs. At the pale mounds of his ass. Seungmin didn’t have much in terms of shape or size, but that didn’t mean too much to the instinctive heat that buzzed through Felix’s body and unlocked even more of his memories from Halloween night.

He and Seungmin had come here in the dead of night, attached at the mouths. They broke down the house's back door, literally smashed their way through it, tracking blood and mud and dirt all over the floor. They heard the family inside shriek and panic. The two of them defended themselves. Seungmin made him ‘dinner’ before the two of them fucked in one of the beds upstairs. God, the sex had been good. Literally metamorphosing. Seungmin had stripped out of all of his bloody, wet clothes and his tattoos had glowed in the dark. Neon and bright and intense, filling the room with purplish-green light. Making it look and feel like they were kissing at the edge of the universe, stars all around. Seungmin had reached over, dug into the pockets of his ruined pants, pulled free an almost comical number of colorful condom wrappers. "For the last stage of the ritual," he'd explained. Felix had peeled out of his onesie until the fabric was jumbled up around his ankles like shackles, not giving a damn about rituals. It had been a wild experience from start to finish. Each brush of skin sent a zing through his system like Seungmin's very presence got him high. And then they hardly waited before pounding their way through round two. And then into rounds three and four. Back to back. Unending. Their stamina inhuman. Their orgasms ratcheting up in intensity each time. White cum splattering across red blood. The first two times, Felix had fucked Seungmin. Gently and lovingly and slowly, the first time. Roughly and bruising the second. He barely had the strength and size to push Seungmin’s face into the pillows but the man had played along, obliged him and laid himself out pliant and moaning beneath Felix’s swiveling hips. Then he'd rolled over onto his back, reached up a hand to Felix's chest, used the wild and untamed magic dripping out of his fingertips to draw something across Felix's chest. Felix hadn't asked questions. It felt good and the colors were pretty and the electric touch across his sensitive chest helped him finish. Then Seungmin had barely waited a moment before flipping their positions, pressing Felix into the sheets. 

He was rougher and crueler about it than his sweet, innocent face made him look.

Seungmin didn’t stop pulling on Felix’s hair until the black locks had come clean out of his scalp, tearing and ripping away skin until all that remained was hollowed-out bone. 

Seungmin shoved his fingers into Felix’s mouth and made him suck on them. He didn’t stop until he’d massaged all of Felix’s regular, flat human teeth out of his mouth in a mess of saliva and blood. Until he’d coaxed Felix’s fresh, sharp fangs up through his gums.

Seungmin had gripped him by his twitching, sensitive cock and tugged and pulled and jerked on it until Felix’s lower body had erupted into two dozen wet and dripping, shadowy tentacles.

When Felix shook the memories away, when he came back to the present moment, the first thing his eyes focused on was Seungmin’s asshole.

Felix felt something in his body surge. It longed for freedom. It begged for limitless movement. It demanded it. His onesie bulged, suddenly bloated, and the fabric strained to keep his horrific new body contained. 

It was just cotton, he thought. Surely, he should be able to rip free from such a flimsy prison! 

He was no longer looking in a mirror but he could see himself. His true form. His six, white glowing eyes. His four, sinewy arms tipped with jagged silver claws. The large, fleshy spines that grew from his twisted and knobby backbone. The tentacles that undulated from beneath him. 

His shape was an unknowable shadow. The stuff of nightmares. Pure human fear condensed into a writhing, pitch-black frame.

His insides were the primordial ooze at the beginning and at the end of the world. And all he wanted to do was to open his mouth and _devour_. 

A beast of such magnitude shouldn’t have been contained by something out of last year’s clearance bin. Yet Felix could feel the boundary. He could feel how harshly he was being limited. Something strong--stronger than he was--sat across the front of the costume. A Rune Of Sealing splattered over his chest in dried-up, syrupy white.

Felix looked up at Seungmin with a million questions piled up on the end of his tongue. In the moments he hadn’t been looking, the man had found a cute brown rabbit beneath the couch and now he stood in front of Felix again, smiling.

Felix wanted to ask, _what fucking happened last night?_

Seungmin said, “You take a lot out of me, you know.” He stroked the top of the bunny’s head and Felix could hear it’s tiny heart’s rapid beat from here. “The rest of the circle thought Chan would be the best choice but I argued for the honor of releasing you. Chan had developed too many emotions after so many years of keeping your vessel safe. He would have been... too gentle." He chuckled. His bloody hands were in such stark contrast to the bunny's soft, clean fur. "Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Felix answered. But it was The Beast taking over his vocal chords again.

“I will open the path for you,” Seungmin said. He stepped around Felix and approached the house’s front door. 

He opened it and Felix was assaulted by the sight of the outdoors. 

The sky was black with smoke and hell red from a terribly close forest fire. Ambulance sirens wailed. Fire trucks blared their horns. Police cars whizzed past on the suburban road outside. There were screams. Shouts. The whole neighborhood was a shit show.

It was pandemonium. Pure chaos. And Felix knew that The Beast had been the cause of it. That The Beast would be the cause of so much _more_. Felix knew that he would be the epicenter of destruction and that he had no power to stop it.

He kind of didn’t want this. He just wanted to have a fun night with his friends!

But it was a bit too late to change fate.

There was just enough humanity left in him for frightened tears to drip out of the six slits of his eyes.

Seungmin walked up to him and tore off Felix's cheap onesie. His wicked, superhuman strength made simple work of the thin, stained cotton.

The Beast freed itself from its tiny, mortal shell.

All hell broke loose.


End file.
